


Unmistakable

by fhsa_archivist



Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Challenge Response, Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-09-02
Updated: 2004-09-02
Packaged: 2019-02-05 18:57:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12800289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhsa_archivist/pseuds/fhsa_archivist
Summary: Pairing #46 at The Quickie Challenge: http://quickie.moonlitpaths.com





	Unmistakable

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Haven, the archivist: This story was originally archived at [Fandom Haven Story Archive (FHSA)](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom_Haven_Story_Archive), was scheduled to shut down at the end of 2016. To preserve the archive, I began working with the OTW to transfer the stories to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. If you are this creator and the work hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Fandom Haven Story Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/fhsa/profile).

Everyone has his or her own unique scent; something that marks them as being them and no one else. Its usually a food smell, though it is always under laid with the unique 'flavor' of that person; like a sensory fingerprint. 

 

I didn't know any of that before I was infected. In fact, I hardly noticed anything about smells and scents before that time. 

 

It's funny how you don't notice those little things when you're going about your everyday life. The perfume the woman next to you on the bus is wearing, the smell of grease on your fries. 

 

You notice when you're a shifter, believe me. 

 

Those first few months after I was infected, things were hell for me. Not just on the physical side, the aches in my body from changes that I couldn't control. Not to mention the ever sadistic Raina and Gabriel that took their pleasures from bringing me pain. 

 

Over and over again. 

 

No, my biggest grief was scent. 

 

Everything smelled now; and not always pleasantly. 

 

The stains of oil on the street. 

 

The smell of sweat in a gym. 

 

The rankness of urine in a restroom. 

 

It was all there; assaulting my senses. And it made me sick. I couldn't bear it at first and stayed locked inside my room any time I was able. I just didn't want to leave, to smell the awfulness of the world. Even shampoo and perfume were suddenly too much to bear. 

 

Of course, over time, I got used to it, learned to push it to the side and call only upon that sense when it was necessary. I adapted, just as I had at so many other points in my life; becoming what I had to be just to survive. That's all it was, survival; not ever truly 'living'. I was a whore for the amusement of those stronger than me. 

 

Which meant everyone. 

 

I was a whore to anyone that wanted me. 

 

But then. . . 

 

Raina died. 

 

Gabriel died. 

 

And then she came into my life. 

 

Not Anita. 

 

For all that I was hung up on that woman, I did know when to move on. They say I don't know when to say 'enough'. That applies only to pain, not to my emotions. I couldn't take the constant rejection she offered me. 

 

And so I found someone else. 

 

She was dancing in one of Jean-Claude's dance clubs. Not stripping. She wasn't that type of girl. She was there, in one of the more normal of the Master's nightclubs, shaking her body and enjoying herself. 

 

Why I suddenly had the courage to ask her to dance, I don't know. Certainly it was unlike anything I normally would do; far too aggressive for someone like me, the weakest member of the pard. The one that let himself be stepped upon and hurt for the pleasure of others. It would have seemed odd to any of the others to see me decide to ask someone to dance with me, instead of waiting for a willing participant to seek me out. 

 

But I did. 

 

And she accepted. 

 

She smelled like cinnamon. Warm, tangy and sweet. It was a smell that was unmistakably 'her'. Those copper curls, pouting lips. Eyes so green that they put emeralds to shame. And this scent that drove me wild. 

 

You smell good enough to eat, I whispered in her ear. 

 

So eat me, she replied with a shrug of her shoulders and a slight blush to her cheeks. 

 

Her lips lifted up, meeting mine. And she tasted just as good as she smelled. Her mouth was warm, inviting; and filled with the sweetness that her scent promised. She had asked me to 'eat her', and so I did; devouring her mouth with mine, right there in the middle of the swarming dance floor, oblivious to anyone but her. 

 

We had to break it apart when Gregory came over and said we were 'creating a scene'. She had blushed bright red and pulled me off to one side, resuming in the shadows what we had done to blatantly only a few moments before. 

 

When the club closed for the night, she invited me home. 

 

And, after telling the others where I would be, I accepted. 

 

We made love that night. It was the first time I could remember 'making love' in my entire adult life. Not sex. Not a rough fuck or an escapade into the wild side of BDSM. No, this was what love could feel like. 

 

And though I didn't know at the time that I'd fall in love with her, I accepted the tender kisses, the soft caresses. 

 

I welcomed it with open arms and a passion that could have hurt either one of us; but did not. 

 

Months later, that scent still drives me wild. Even when I'm not right there with her. Walking through the mall, past one of those sticky bun vendors, when I smell the cinnamon I come undone; its times like those that I can't get home to her soon enough. To take her in my arms and remind myself how lucky I am to have her. She's the one bright spot in these last few years of hell. 

 

Here she comes, I can tell already, the way the cinnamon sweetness of her skin drifts over the spring breeze. 

 

"Something wrong, Nathaniel?" 

 

I smile up at her as her thin arms slide down across my chest in a hug, her body pressed to my back. 

 

My darling Willow. 

 

"Just thinking how much I love you." 

 

She smiles and my own smile just gets that much wider. 

 

Cinnamon. 

 

Unmistakable and completely, utterly Her. 

 

~*~The End~*~


End file.
